ArcSoft's Total Media Theatre: Using the GPU to Enhance Video Playback

TotalMedia Theatre (TMT) uses Nvidia's CUDA technology to power what it calls SimHD, effectively an upscaling technique that can make DVD video look more like it came from a Blu-Ray.

As I continue to test applications that take more advantage of GPUs, I turned my attention to ArcSoft's TotalMedia Theatre 3 application. Last week, I wrote about how vReveal improves your personal videos--but many people just want the DVDs they already have to look better. TotalMedia Theatre (TMT) does just that: It uses Nvidia's CUDA technology to power what it calls SimHD," effectively an upscaling technique that can make DVD video look more like it came from a Blu-Ray.

On the image above (click to enlarge), you'll see how it looks. I used a special mode for splitting the screen into a section that does use this enhancement and another that doesn't. Note the left half is the normal DVD playback, and it looks pretty much like it would look in any DVD playback software. The right side though, is notably clearer. TMT has upscaled the resolution from the normal 720 by 480 to a 1280-by-720 resolution. (The product actually is supposed to handle resolution to up to 1920 by 1080 on most current desktop Nvidia cards and 1280 by 720 on most of the mobile ones, but the monitor on the desktop I was using was more limited.) Notice in particular the improvement in clarity in the brick wall in the background and the edge of the poker table in this scene from "Rounders."

Total Media Theatre has a number of other features of course - it's one
of the most full-featured media playback solutions I've seen. It can
play back most types of content, including DVDs and Blu-Ray disks (with
all sorts of options), files from high-def camcorders (including AVCHD
MTS) and most other camcorders as well (DVD-Video AVI, and so on), and all
sorts of online video formats.

On the video playback, TMT has a variety of neat options, including
"Smart Stretch" to stretch the video to fit the dimensions of your
screen (not something I really cared for, but others might) and "Time
Stretch" which adjusts the playback speed of the movie, so you can
watch it faster, but with the same apparent video and audio quality.

It supports lossless 7.1 audio, and the next generation audio formats
used in Blu-Ray didsk; and offers various audio controls including a
10-band equalizer.

But it's the SimHD upscaling feature that most impressed me. ArcSoft
says it compares favorably with other upscaling solutions, but not
having seen these side by side, I can't judge. I can say I saw a
noticeable improvement on the DVDs I tried.

The great news is that the program is able to offer the upscaling with
very little impact on other programs you are running.
Even when upscaling, the program was only using about 10 percent of CPU
resources on my test system (which has a Core 2 Quad processor and an
Nvidia 9800GT).

One reason ArcSoft says it is introducing this feature first for
Nvidia's CUDA platform because it finds the nature of the GPU is good
for parallel processing and image manipulation, and this in turns is good
both for speed and for keeping the original image information. The
company says it is working on a version for the ATI Stream platform as
well, though it says that may take more time to be finished. It also
says it has a version of SimHD that would only use the CPU on the
roadmap, but that would require a change in the algorithm to minimize
CPU usage.

Total Media Theatre is obviously a high-end solution, one that will
appeal primarily to people who want to use their PCs in a home theatre
setting. But it looks great. It's also a terrific example of what GPU
acceleration can do today.

Michael J. Miller's Forward Thinking Blog: forwardthinking.pcmag.com
Michael J. Miller is chief information officer at Ziff Brothers Investments, a private investment firm. From 1991 to 2005, Miller was editor-in-chief of PC Magazine, responsible for the editorial direction, quality and presentation of the world's largest computer publication.
Until late 2006, Miller was the Chief Content Officer for Ziff Davis Media, responsible for overseeing the editorial positions of Ziff Davis's magazines, websites, and events. As Editorial Director for Ziff Davis Publishing since 1997, Miller took an active role in...
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